Mortie, Mortie: He's no shorty, Mortie.
I saw “Willard”, starring Crispin Glover. Creepy, unsettling, and worth every penny.
Diana found a new place to live starting April 15th. It’s at the Opera Plaza building – almost like a mini city inside. I couldn’t live in that sort of dwelling – it’s too hotel-like, and I reserve that living for the occasional trip to Vegas.
I’m meeting with some people from the Green MBA program at New College on March 10th in Santa Rosa.After seeing a play called ‘Ballyhoo’ at Rebar, my friend Camille and I head to a restaurant named Toi (pronounced ‘toy’). The DJ in the lounge has just started, and most of the guys in the place look and dress like Matthew Perry’s character, Chandler Bing, from ‘Friends’. Two exceptionally-scantily-clad women dance together on the tiny dance floor, which leads me to believe they might have been hired to draw people in.
I don’t know why, but I watched the almost-final episode of Joe Millionaire. It’s amazing how vapid most of the contestants were. “Joe” chose the good all-American girl rather than the gold-digger.The protests have been all over the mainstream news. This is wonderful, although Bush has deemed them a “focus group”.
Today, 200,000 people marched in San Francisco. Laura and I were two of them. We marched behind the official start of the march, which I would assume is where Joan Baez and Danny Glover were, but after hitting several stalls (and limited chanting), we found the real march was in front of the United for Peace and International ANSWER banners – there was dancing, drumming and singing a block further. So much better.I stayed at the rally to hear Barbara Lee speak, but left. As I left, I noticed the police were suiting up, likely for the unofficial breakaway march planned later that day. I have mixed opinions about the black bloc – true, one shouldn’t need a permit to march in the city, but when any media organization gets whiff of the ritual glass-breaking of Starbucks, Old Navy and Gap windows and mass arrests, that seems to overshadow and undermine the effort of the official, mainstream march. I lean towards the idea that the black bloc is a bad thing for the protest movement, but I can’t and won’t take away their right to do what they do. I only know that I won’t have any part of it because I saw how it undermined the WTO protests in Seattle.
Fortunately, the media separated the mainstream protest from the breakaway protest. This seemed to be reflected on major outlets nationwide.
I love Ti Couz – spinach, goat cheese and garlic crepe, and a chocolate and pear dessert crepe. That, and I find that my formerly 34 waist is now a 33. Narcissistic? Maybe. But I feel so much better.
Yowza! I weigh 182 pounds – I feel so much younger with this 15-pound difference, and much more energetic.While downtown this morning, a Southern tourist asked loudly to his friend “why white people would want to visit SF, when there are so many of those sickly homeless colored people”? I wanted to tell him off (I suspect his name was Jim Crow), but declined. An African-American woman next to me shook her head. Ugh. I had several comebacks prepared in my head later that day to mentally pound him into a stain. Timing, natch.
I finally find my grade report in a filing cabinet down the hall from where the class meets, where I’ve received three A’s and one A-plus! Hooah.
After a couple of intense days catching up and making progress with my freelance work, I welcomed another trip to SF, albeit on the lottery-seat airline, Southwest. Tonight Norman Solomon and Reese Ehrlich spoke about their new book “Target Iraq: What the News Media Isn’t Telling You”. Somewhat troubling was the Q&A session that followed – most people weren’t so much asking questions as they were promoting their own organizations. I realize that some non-profits struggle, but I thought that the session should be about asking questions, not long diatribes of quotes that the audience already knew. An elderly woman (whose first protest was in 1939) spoke about the need to bring the message to not just the converted, but the mainstream. Bingo! My thesis. I talked to her afterwards. She asked if I was single, because she has a 25-year-old daughter, though a New Yorker. When I told her I was 32, she said, “You’re almost old enough for me!” We chuckled about that. Norman and I are talk about an email dialogue about my graduate school options.I skedaddled down to the Digital Movie House to see “Nothing so Strange”, a faux documentary about the assassination about Bill Gates and the official inquiry that follows, and is subsequently discredited by a conspiracy theorist group filled with infighting. Apparently the director had an obsession with the Kennedy assassination and wanted to direct his energy to a more healthy endeavor – in this case, independent film. Bill Gates’ official statement about the movie: “I find it disappointing that anyone would want to make a movie like this.”
Today I wander as a tourist downtown. On the way to the airport, I stop for a shoeshine, performed by an elderly black gentleman named Randolph. We talked about the coming war with Iraq, and he tells me about his family history with war: his grandfather was in World War I, father in World War II, he was in the Korean War, and his son was in Desert Storm. His son just resigned his commission (voluntarily) after eight years of service. The timing was not coincidental – his son is opposed to the war and what it stands for. I only mention that my father was in Vietnam and his father was in World War II, and that I felt fortunate not to have to be a part of any conflict, but was much more interested in hearing his perspective. It was a nice way to leave this city until I visit next Thursday.
I connected with several students today – Natasha, Yusef, Gerald and Jeremiah – over lunch at a Pakistani restaurant. That felt good, and those connections made me really feel a part of the city, almost as a resident, and no longer as a stranger. The afternoon found me nodding off during the last hour (sorry).Diana and I have dinner at a totally-out-of-place-in-the-Haight restaurant called RNM, a French and American fusion establishment. I eventually got into a conversation with a couple sitting next to us – it turns out that the guy sitting next to me works for the National Labor Relations Board – and talked about the rise and fall and present status of the labor/union movement. I didn’t expect that.
Nicole, my partner in the cleanse, and I had “real” (and by real, I mean not) food for breakfast at the Ccoastal Kitchen. I had the goat cheese rhumba, with spinach and eggs and cilantro, and some tea. Not the healthiest breakfast, but a little gift to myself since I stuck religiously to the cleanse for two weeks.Diana and I were going to have dinner this weekend at Platanos in the Mission, but just found out that the chef there was killed a couple of blocks from there last night. I think that’d be kind of creepy to eat somewhere when the body’s not even cold yet.